Guild Wars 2

DPS has a lot of incidental healing, too. If you kill an enemy that a downed player has tagged, you rally them, restoring a significant chunk of health and removing all pre-downed conditions. If you DPS all the enemies down, you end combat, causing people to regenerate as fast as a Call of Duty player.

If you don’t want pure DPS, you need to have attrition mechanics. Look at Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, with its stuff like healing surges. If there were unlimited healing surges, no one would play anything but a ranger.

People on the forums say PvE is easy. People who have just been handed a repair bill by their GW2LFG pug may not agree.

What the heck is your point, exactly?

I don’t eat mushrooms IRL in order to grow to double my height, busting apart brickwork with my own head.

I don’t go to Iraq, shoot a bunch of people, get shot 20 times in return, then duck behind a wall and be perfectly fine 10 seconds later.

I don’t kill thousands upon thousands of boars until any sword in my hand becomes a weapon of mass destruction.

The rules of the game determine the logic. They are the physics of their virtual realms.

I wouldn’t. I’d make everything else equally facerollable, and bring back the City of Heroes glory days.

Mirta.5029:

for proper balance both should be done. We should have classes that are strong in their own way. If we buffed everyone up, we would need to buff the whole pve up, because pve would be too easy. However nerfing the good classes to the floor would make pve too hard. In my opinion
classes that are good as they are:
thieves,
elementalists,
mesmers,
guardians,
engineers.
classes in need of a nerf:
warriors
classes in need of a buff:
necromancers,
rangers.
What will be done? Buff was promised to engineers and rangers, that will leave necromancers as the lowest on damage class. On the upside, condition will get re-worked, so that will benefit all.

No point buffing those classes, if you mess up the bar they’d be raised to (Warriors, particularly in CoFp1).

Progression PvErs are all in Fractals anyway. The story dungeons aren’t going to cry if people faceroll them.

Trolls End portals are a social thing. The rewards from the chest are not so overpowered that it creates a problem in any sense. To stop it would be to make the game more impersonal for zero benefit.

I’m on the top dog for our bracket (Tarnished Coast) and I still agree with the OP. It’s not fun. There’s no good massive battles to fight, either we eat the opposition alive, or they manage to turtle in their few remaining keeps for hours on end.

I think the big problem with world PvE right now is that the social dynamic leads to what I call “tipping points”. Basically, either everyone wants to do an event, or no one does.

Simple example: Champions. If one or two people are around when it spawns, they typically flee, or give up after the first wipe.

Get it down to half health, however, and see the throng of players that show up. It’s like a party, and no one’s invited, but everyone’s here anyway.

Really, what you have are these huge zones, that take quite some time to cross on foot. Events typically happen in chains, that sometimes branch, but more often than not are simply pass/fails. There’s no cohesion; the Battle for Beetletun has nothing to do with the Secret in the Swamp, and the farmers and miners to the northeast are completely unconcerned about anyone else’s problems as long as they have a clean water reservoir.

Compare this to how sPvP is designed. Small maps. Every capture point is its own little event that never stops. The route for PvE should have been to take that idea, and begin scaling upwards. Give the enemy a hive mind, that sends out its units along paths, instead of just spawning them with a script. You can play a game of Civilization 4 or Starcraft with no human players, and simply watch the AI duke it out, so what I am talking about here is not a technical implausibility.

I should have said dissonant. You are right, cacophonous is a more subjective term.

I’d play a “hard mode” PvE map, if “hard” didn’t mean more garbage like Karka, or oneshot-inflicting Champions with more zeroes in their total HP than in a bowl of Cheerios.

Jemmi.6058:

clay.7849:

Jemmi.6058:

clay.7849:

Jemmi.6058:

Einlanzer.1627:

There will come a point in time, soon, where horizontal progress is deemed objectively superior, at least for an MMO.

How do you define superior?

If it is based on most entertaining, that is by its very nature subjective

If it is based on sales, then I doubt horizontal will be considered superior anytime soon. Very few if any games are entirely horizontal (even GW2 which has a lot of horizontal is still largely vertical). That, and as you said, WoW is largely vertically oriented and it is the MMO leader by far (for player and money count).

But, it isn’t subjective. You can’t just lump everything in entertainment as subjective. There are objective logical truths to some things, regardless of some people not liking it or preferring the alternative.

It is either subjective or objective. To be objective, there must be an absence of personal opinion or bias. Entertainment is inherently based on personal preference and therefore is subjective. To be objective in the entertainment industry, you must set objective targets. For example, it is subjective to say that Batman The Dark Night is superior to Batman Begins. However, it is objective to say Batman The Dark Night sold more at the box office.

Back to what I posted, one option is subjective and one is objective.

Music is often based on subjective preference, but there are still objectives truths about what makes music good.

I think you may have to be more specific on that. I do not think you can say that there are objective truths on what make music good. I am willing to be proven wrong if you can elaborate? My reasoning is that ‘good music’ is subjective, and therefore all truths about what makes good music are subjective.

You could write a computer program that analyzes a piece of sheet music and tells you if it’s cacophonous, or doesn’t stay in a key consistently. Sure, you could say its possible to like it when songs behave like that, just as much as its “possible” to build a car with square wheels.

miniL.7361:

To be Hones, you talk about raids, but how about the squad from commander, or just regulard RAID groups are added? I like to see everyones HP in small screens if I wish, or down states like in PVP, or something like it.

That way coordinating would be so much easier and it just LACKS that option.
A lot of nice changes that need adapting to, but its just lacking stuff as well, because a group just isnt going to cut it for a legion event, or any event in that case imo.

I’d love that. I’d like to say “Ongoing PvE zerg, auto-join if you want lots of blue dots to follow around the map”, but I’m not paying 100g for the privilege to do so. I think that is a major obstacle towards the sort of zeitgeist the OP describes.

Several skills, such as Spatial Surge, Long Range Shot, Blunderbuss, and Blowtorch do more damage if you are in an ideal range when using them.

I would like the area that turns red when your target is out of range, to fade from orange to green as you approach the ideal proximity. Or another method. It can make some weapons more annoying than others to try to guesstimate these things.

I want pistol for Guardians. I am the law!

I have fun when me and my friend do events together. We have a nice level of challenge staying alive while AoEing everything down.

Then more people show up because they notice progress is being made on the event, and completely trivialize it. Thanks guys. You really helped us out there.

The scaling needs improvement. Otherwise, these “open world raids” will result in the same fiasco as the daily rare for Behemoth/Maw/Elemental/etc

Malediktus.9250:

Oh look its this thread again.
119g for endgame skin set is cheap. There should be even more expensive ones.

The problem is not the expense. The problem is that gold is the currency for the expense, which funnels you into high-paying content (which is usually a specific path of a specific dungeon, very very repetitive).

Oh, I’ve no doubt Fractals are the most popular non-CoFp1 content on GW2LFG. I see no reason why someone would like the launch dungeons but not Fractals. But I don’t see why that crowd would have asked for another tier above Exotic. Gear progression is more the love of the Burning Crusade fan.

Generally, in the early levels, you will get a LOT out of a point in the power or precision trait, especially compared to what gear provides. Usually, when those level 80 builds recommend going 30 or 20 points deep into a toughness or vitality trait, its ONLY for a powerful trait, and not worth it otherwise.

As so much of this game is about active defense, it always helps to maximize your DPS, and not invest too much in condition damage or toughness.

There’s one important exception: the signet warrior. They level so fast its ridiculous, but you never want to play one at 80.

Vayne.8563:

RebelYell.7132:

Who is Fractals a compromise with? The WoW expatriots? Dungeons that take forever, and frequently take away your unique profession abilities so you can be a dolphin or whatever, smack of stuff they hate, like The Oculus. The casuals? Well good going making a dungeon that requires a 5-man party, doesn’t scale to any level except 80, and doesn’t give XP, then. People used to GOOD alternate advancement systems, like City of Heroes Incarnate Enhancements and Dark Age of Camelot Realm Ranks? LMAO

If anyone asked for Fractals, Laurels, and Ascended, then what they got is like asking for Lego for Christmas and getting Mega Blocks.

Are you saying Fractals wasn’t/isn’t popular?

Do I have empirical evidence that it isn’t? No. What I bring is logical conjecture.

^ The fact that many elite skills turn out to be “emergency buttons” can make them “not worth using”. Too valuable to waste can be the same as too much trouble to bother, if the end result is your 0 key getting neglected.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Panda.1967:

and unfortunately the solution to inflation in games is to create more gold sinks… which have the side effect of causing prices to go up rather than down, while gold supply decreases… the economy in games is always messed up… Crafting materials always cost more than crafted items… “hot items” are always ludicriously overpriced…

Wait, what? The thing with inflation is, that when you have a product that is in somewhat limited supply, and people have on average just few silvers, it is quite impossible to sell it for one gold, since nobody can buy it. And even if they could, if the item is not overly desired, nobody would buy it for such a high price. Then again, if everyone had 100g just sitting on their bank account, they wouldn’t mind paying a couple of gold coins for something they might need someday.
Therefore, when we reduce the amount of gold an average player has, we reduce the inflation rate.

So to sum it:
If nobody has over 50s, can’t sell an everlasting snowman tonic for 1g
If everyone has 100g on average, can sell everlasting snowman tonic easily for well over 1g
Because you can now sell the tonic easily for 1g, you decide to ask 5g for it and bide your time until someone buys it. Nobody wants to sell the tonic for 1g now since they figure they can get more. Therefore, the price of the tonic has gone up.
Equals: Inflation.

Now that I have explained to you, how gold sinks work in theory, please do tell me how they work in your opinion? Since gold sinks are not pro-inflation, they are anti-inflation by design.

Someone on a fixed income does not need an Everlasting Tonic. They are a luxury item.

Imagine a world where, even as things got more expensive, gas remained fixed at US$1/gallon. Then everyone would be wealthier even as the money supply increased, because the opportunity cost of vehicular travel has been greatly diminished. Air travel becomes feasible for a lot more people, creating more free time all around.

Click a waypoint. Do you see the price going up as CoF p1 farming becomes more prolific? No? That’s because your theoretical Snowman Tonic Cartel has no control over it. Those little walks you decide to take to save yourself 3s become a lot more time-consuming relative to your income. The fact that it takes an entire even’ts pay to repair your armor is no longer an annoyance. There’s lots more silver in your pocket for other things of a fixed expense, like siege blueprints.

Meanwhile, the way gem prices spike whenever something desirable goes up on the gem shop leads me to deduce that there’s already an overabundance of gold.

Who is Fractals a compromise with? The WoW expatriots? Dungeons that take forever, and frequently take away your unique profession abilities so you can be a dolphin or whatever, smack of stuff they hate, like The Oculus. The casuals? Well good going making a dungeon that requires a 5-man party, doesn’t scale to any level except 80, and doesn’t give XP, then. People used to GOOD alternate advancement systems, like City of Heroes Incarnate Enhancements and Dark Age of Camelot Realm Ranks? LMAO

If anyone asked for Fractals, Laurels, and Ascended, then what they got is like asking for Lego for Christmas and getting Mega Blocks.

I know what a transmutation stone is. I still prefer how the HoM and SAB dispense items you clearly want only for the look.

1g for doing 5 dailies is a freaking drop in the bucket compared to what CoF path 1 generates. All this would do is allow for fewer newbies who are too poor to repair their armor. People who use “inflation” as a scare word in MMORPGs have no idea what they’re talking about. +1 for the OP

They don’t even need to have a scaling system. The events will never not be zerged, with the current daily rare system + Dragon Timers. Just give a lot more health to any lowbie boss that gives the daily rare.

Poplolita.2638:

I left me a rly bad taste when when you made that bear and monk tank dodging from wow comparison. But now that I know what point you were truly trying to make, I think I changed my mind about you; I like you You nailed it, and I completly agree with you.
Note: Sorry about my grammar, I’m on my iphone.

I apologize. I’m aware the game is about active defense, I can be a bit.. selectively forgetful of that fact depending on my mood while posting.

I enjoyed it a lot more than Keg Brawl. Please make it a permanent feature.

kartek.6428:

Tier 3 Cultural Armor is not meant to have the best stats. People buy it for the skin, which is meant to be expensive. It’s supposed to be a set that not very many people have, and lowering the cost would change that.

This game is supposed to be grinding for cosmetic items instead of for overpowered gear.

Why use a currency you can simply convert from cash shop gems, in this case?

+1. The age of the smartphone seems like it would be so perfect for games that do stuff like you had with the Sega Dreamcast VMU.

Making the phone game playable without a copy of GW2 would be a great way to sell the game to people who just grab any free game they can find, too.

I’d be fine with “learning curves” if all professions could do Hundred Blades-esque damage with enough practice. This is clearly not the case.

As was mentioned in another thread, a problem seems to be that PvE is designed around WoW style crawls that only work for WoW’s trinity. While in PvP, because it uses objectives like capture points, it allows for more professions to be useful.

Imagine if PvE was approached by the same philosophy. If, instead of WoW style PvE where you pull the enemy most relevant to your current goal, you took a more DotA style approach, trying to hold the line against a tide of enemies, and push friendlies forward. Thief spamming blinds could be one of the most valuable members of the team! Turret engineers might be OVERPOWERED! Necromancer durability might be an asset, rather than poor compensation for their DPS!

I hope, if there is paid DLC, or an expansion, that they really rethink PvE altogether.

Lafiel.9372:

From what I know, the last ban waves of exploits was underlined in my below examples. Can everyone defending the exploit please answer these examples I have given earlier:

Oh this crafting item requires a lot less than usual mats compared to others of it’s same quality tier. I wonder if this is an exploit?

Oh, this karma merchant is selling something extremely cheap compared to others of its tier, I wonder if this is an exploit?

Did you really think this was not an exploit? Seriously. SERIOUSLY.

MMORPGs reward efficiency. Gw2spidey might well lead you to the first example without it ever even crossing your mind you’re doing something wrong.

Lafiel.9372:

Seems people ignore the perfectly good elites that some people have listed out and only claim that they’re useless. Tell me people who complain about elites? What did you expect elites to be? A skill that would give you 1 hit ko ability? 10x your HP? something super imbalance which would make every class revolve around their elite abilities?

None of these are as OP as your hypotheticals

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Signet_of_spirits

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Assassin%27s_Promise

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Aura_of_the_lich

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Panic

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ineptitude

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Energy_Surge

Of particular note are the cooldowns on many of these. Even the longest aren’t as long as, say, Time Warp, which was considered so OP that it got the nerf bat.

mrauls.6519:

I had that feeling too. Expand your mind and think outside of the box. Each Elite has a purpose and something it is extremely good with. The question is: Does it fit in your niche?

Most elites don’t fit any niche I can think up, as they aren’t up often enough, whereas something like GW1 Aura of the Lich might typically last, in terms of continued and cascading effects, well until it was off cooldown again.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I might be a bit inclined to view any comparisons to WoW in a negative light.

As is much of this forum, which can make serious game design discussion troublesome.

MMORPGs teach you to exploit. They encourage you to maximize your DPS through every means possible. They teach you that making money isn’t just a matter of having enough to be comfortable, but that it’s also an arms race against everyone else who wants to make money. They teach you that only those who outthink or outplay their fellow man are “special”. And developers do a kitt… poor job of drawing a line.

lordkrall.7241:

Apollo.7389:

no they can’t its proven. 99 times out of 100 a premade will beat a pug unless the premade is not that good or they make a several huge mistakes.

Please provide these real static that shows that 99% of the matches a premade team will win against a PUG-team.

Demands for empirical data for every single anecdote posted is becoming the Godwin’s Law of these forums. Once someone does it, you know they’ve clamped their hands over their ears in regards to actual discourse.

digiowl.9620:

RebelYell.7132:

Mesmers have a better minion bombing mechanic That cinches it for me.

Why those skinned critters can’t learn to run towards a target before going pop, when transparent magical constructs can, is a puzzle…

There’s that. There’s also that their cooldown starts immediately after their creation. Why this is not true for turrets, undead, spirit weapons, and elementals, elicits a classic James Rofle What were they thinking? from me.

Here are some characters in games I think defy the trinity model as established by World of Warcraft, but still have a distinct role in their team:

• Dominator (City of Heroes) – CoH had a mechanic similar to Defiance that gave bosses a special resistance to CC, called Magnitude. A creature would not be affected by CC until covered by X Magnitude worth of effects. What Dominators had, was the ability to pop a special mode that doubled the magnitude of all their control powers, allowing them to lock down dangerous bosses.

• Villainous Epic Archetype (City of Heroes) – A “jack of all trades”, sort of what like Engineer advocates like to call themselves. However, it actually works here, because they provide just enough of their buffs, debuffs, and DPS to be appreciable in every aspect, without so much that it becomes redundant to take more than one along (like it might with too many Guardians).

• Empathy/Sonic Defender (City of Heroes) – If you think Empathy is a healbot spec, you haven’t played the real CoH. Empathy is all about buffing your team’s damage and insulating them from attrition, while Sonic debuffs damage resistance. The synergy is through the roof. A good thing to understand about CoH as well is that many buffs provided boosts to your “Defence” stat, making them more of a GW1 Prot Monk than a true healer.

• Bard (Everquest) – Their method of providing buffs through “songs” became all the more interesting when you “twisted” them. Twisting meant to keep more than one up at once, which was made tricky by their short duration. This made them a class that rewarded situational adaptation and high APM.

More NPC interaction in PvP modes.

In WvWvW, keep guards are a joke. In sPvP, sometimes there’s a guy you can kill for a buff, but you’re hardly jungling.

I had a lot of fun in Jade Quarry. There were shrines to cap, shrines to defend, and turtles to escort. People who overly focused themselves on racking up player kills were often DETRIMENTAL to their team. sPvP never requires you to think about something like that, as it is now.

I feel the elites have the same problem as racial skills in WoW clones. If you make them too good, and/or off CD too often, they completely define the metagame. So then you give them really long CDs. Now, people save them for bosses, or if the boss has multiple phases, they save it for when the boss is most dangerous.

I think my solution would have been to have had four utilities, and the elite be the #3 on a single handed weapon and #5 on a 2hander. That way, you could have, say, 2 per weapon per profession. My rationale for this is that, since weapons define your build, elite + weapon could define it even further.

Mesmers have a better minion bombing mechanic That cinches it for me.

zenleto.6179:

Omg!

And I wouldn’t mind the occasional dose of that cheesey video game music now and then.

That’s one reason I play this game despite complaining so much about it. When I do battle, I’m not listening to Jeremy Soule, I’m listening to ZUN (well, Demetori covering ZUN). The custom soundtrack feature is a sublime idea.

Leablo.2651:

I agree there should be more anime girl bosses. That was the point of the video wasn’t it?

It is for me (see sig)

I’m surprised there’s no DotA mode. It’d be something I’d enjoy. I like the community in GW2 a lot better than in DotA2/LoL.

I didn’t like getting duel-spammed in Goldshire any more than anyone else, but a little pit people could fight in in Lion’s Arch or something would be cool.

Scrambles.2604:

Geotherma.2395:

Onshidesigns.1069:

Just because someone has more things does not always mean they are rich. They could be in debt. About to lose their job or business. What responsible rich person would just waste money on a game?

Rosario Dawson
Megan Fox
Mila Kunis
Seth Rogen
Jessica Alba
Jenny McCarthy
Daniel Craig
Snoop Dogg
Zac Efron
Jodie Foster

there’s more…

Not solely MMO’s, but I would say a lot of rich responsible (does not apply to all people listed..) people can and do play/buy games.

This thread has derailed so hard it is now in the middle of the ocean.

I knew when I got my PM notifying me that it had been moved out of Suggestions, that it was time to make some popcorn.

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

RebelYell.7132:

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

Zeppelin.6832:

Hence the problem with horizontal progression. Going after different “skins” is great, but you can only wear one set of armor at the time. Eventually you’re going to settle on what you like, and then what? There’s nothing else to do on a character.

Except play the game. That is what GW is supposed to be all about. You level, outfit your toon, then just play. It worked in GW1 for 7 years.

What worked in GW1 was:

• Four PvE campaigns to complete, with two difficulty modes.
• Infinite combinations of professions and skills and compositions to test out
• Numerous PvP modes to play, some just to be the biggest fish in the pond, others to grind out things useful for PvE, or to exchange for money.
• Armor skins you could farm (and not get hit by DR) mats to craft
• An instance that actually changed as you progressed, reflecting your deeds (the Hall of Monuments)

I’d like to “just play” in GW2, but all it really seems to offer to the goal-oriented is CoF path 1. The activities in my list felt a lot less meandering.

Most of what you are describing where additions to the game with expansions. The original game was MUCH different from what you are describing. For example, they have not even come out with the first expansion for GW2 yet so saying you had 4 expansions in GW1 really is not a valid argument.

You are right. I confess, I showed up to the party for HoM. But I liked the game. But yes, many of those PvP modes were introduced in Factions. And I liken the initial Personal Story to the Prophecies campaign (which was a downright chore to clear without heroes, I should also admit).

But in terms of cosmetic grinds, I think UW/FoW were a more accessible, straightforward model than collecting dungeon tokens, or CoF p1ing your way slowly towards a Legendary.

Anyway, I’d be very interested to see what GW2 is like when they’ve had as much time as it took for EotN to come out for GW1. Though I worry about whether its headed down a similar path.

Ascended/Fractals are not bad because all level cap progression is bad. There are several well-regarded progression systems in other games (DAoC Realm Ranks, The Burning Crusade raiding, City of Heroes Incarnate Enhancements). Ascended/Fractals are bad because they are bad. To believe otherwise is superstition (unless you think they are good, which is your choice).

ShiningSquirrel.3751:

Zeppelin.6832:

Hence the problem with horizontal progression. Going after different “skins” is great, but you can only wear one set of armor at the time. Eventually you’re going to settle on what you like, and then what? There’s nothing else to do on a character.

Except play the game. That is what GW is supposed to be all about. You level, outfit your toon, then just play. It worked in GW1 for 7 years.

What worked in GW1 was:

• Four PvE campaigns to complete, with two difficulty modes.
• Infinite combinations of professions and skills and compositions to test out
• Numerous PvP modes to play, some just to be the biggest fish in the pond, others to grind out things useful for PvE, or to exchange for money.
• Armor skins you could farm (and not get hit by DR) mats to craft
• An instance that actually changed as you progressed, reflecting your deeds (the Hall of Monuments)

I’d like to “just play” in GW2, but all it really seems to offer to the goal-oriented is CoF path 1. The activities in my list felt a lot less meandering.

Hoyvin.3241:

RebelYell.7132:

Hoyvin.3241:

The people that buy gems for real cash are the ones providing A-Net with a cash flow in order to keep the doors open, servers on and new content coming all the time.

It’s either that or pay $15/month. Pick your choice.

It’s that simple.

The people who paid the box cost already fund those, because the product is sold as finished goods with a service guarantee.

Nonsense. In order for A-Net to stay open, they have to have cash flow. Up-front sales is not going to do that, especially in light of the “no paid expansion soon” declaration.

Finished goods? In an MMO? An MMO, or at least a successful MMO, is never “finished goods.” Let’s look at WoW. Four expansions that you had to pay for. Numerous non-paid expasions like Firelands or Dragon Soul. They have a $15/month fee. GW2 does not, for comparatively priced base products. Why do you suppose that is?

Read the EULA. I guarantee in there is a clause in there that they can change whatever they want in that game whenever they want, for whatever reason they want, and without telling you about it.

It’s not an MMORPG. It’s a B2P online RPG, the legacy of Guild Wars 1. MMORPGs are virtual worlds such as Ultima Online: The Second Age, this is an RPG where sometimes a faceless horde will show up to do an event with you.

If they’ve designed the game as such that box sales cannot cover server overhead, and require “whales” (actual marketing term), IE the three and four (and sometimes five) figure spenders to keep the game afloat, then they shouldn’t market the game as an online RPG like Guild Wars 1, they should market it as Farmville, because its companies like Zynga and Mobage and such that typically play that way.